Fiio M3k

[amachronic]

FWIW, we usually strongly discourage putting installation instructions in the forums since it is a lot easier for people to find the M3K wiki which is linked from the front page of Rockbox.org.  Once things are worked out, someone should put the instructions in the wiki (and eventually the manual).

Ah, my bad. What you're saying makes sense. The instructions were originally in the wiki, but since the bootloader binary release I moved the instructions to the forum... I assumed that was what the "Manual installation" forum was for, but I see now it seems to be intended for questions relating to manual installation.

[vitt13]

Dual booting the original FiiO firmware with Rockbox is now supported.

Thank you for your incredible work.
Am I right that dual boot bootloader replaces 'Vol Up and Power' combination that originally uses to run OF recovery (update OF from microSD).
So do we need to save and take in safe original bootloader dump to be able one day reflash crashed OF?
Is it possible to add menu item in rockbox recovery that runs original recovery (update OF from microSD)? It's stupid, yes, because it can replace rockbox bootloader and then we'll need to flash rockbox bootloader again.
So, if we'll have M3K.fw with rockbox bootloader we need a way to run update from M3K.fw after.

[mario69]

i try to install rockbox but i receive this error message:
[  ERROR] libusb_open: Operation not supported or unimplemented on this platform

i follow your procedure:
First, download the Rockbox bootloader bootloader.m3k and the installation utility jztool for your platform. You will need to refer to the bootloader file later on the command line so it's recommended to put both files in the same folder.
Next, connect the M3K in USB boot mode: plug in one end of the USB cable, and then plug in the other end while holding down the Volume Down button. If you did it correctly then the button light will turn on and the LCD will remain off. Since the USB boot mode is very low level, you might not see any indication on your computer that a USB device was plugged in.

Windows users should now follow the USB driver installation instructions below, before running jztool.

To load the Rockbox bootloader, open a terminal / command prompt in the folder where you downloaded jztool and run the command below. If you have put bootloader.m3k in different folder, you will have to adjust the path accordingly.

Windows:
Code: [Select]
jztool.exe fiiom3k load bootloader.m3k

what am I doing wrong?
thanks

[amachronic]

Am I right that dual boot bootloader replaces 'Vol Up and Power' combination that originally uses to run OF recovery (update OF from microSD).
...Is it possible to add menu item in rockbox recovery that runs original recovery...

The OF recovery can be accessed by holding Play+VolUp and Power. (Not the easiest combo, I know.) And yes, it erases the rockbox bootloader. The recovery menu doesn't have an option to boot the OF or OF recovery because of some technical issues with the current implementation. Hopefully I can fix that in the future.

So, if we'll have M3K.fw with rockbox bootloader we need a way to run update from M3K.fw after.

I see patching M3K.fw as a temporary stopgap to ease installation until the M3K is supported by the Rockbox utility. I'm not a big fan of this idea for the long term:

• Legally speaking, we can't distribute patched firmware updates including the FiiO player app -- although realistically, FiiO probably wouldn't care.
• The OF recovery is brittle: if certain parts of the flash get erased or corrupted due to age or whatever, the recovery kernel will panic. There is no ECC to slow the rate of corruption, either.
• I prefer not to have to depend on 3rd-party and out-of-tree tools.
• An "in-house" solution using the Rockbox utility will be reusable to other X1000-based players, not just the M3K.

[amachronic]

i try to install rockbox but i receive this error message:
[  ERROR] libusb_open: Operation not supported or unimplemented on this platform

Did you install the USB drivers with Zadig?

[vitt13]

The OF recovery can be accessed by holding Play+VolUp and Power. (Not the easiest combo, I know.)

My bad, I did not read the instructions carefully. Thank you!

I see patching M3K.fw as a temporary stopgap to ease installation until the M3K is supported by the Rockbox utility. I'm not a big fan of this idea for the long term:

Actually it's not patching the whole M3K.fw, it's actually creating new one with public tools. But using only single part (bootloader) is not acceptable for OF 'recovery' app. Technically packing tools allow to create config with only particular parts to update, but 'recovery' app on the player side is not accept them. I need to place and pack all three parts (i.e. dumped bootloader, kernel and system parts too) to new M3K.fw or at least bootloader and system image. And it works.
I.e.
using only bootloader gave me 'update failed'
'bootloader + kernel' gives me freeze on progress bar 'Updating... 8%'
'bootloader + system' gave me successfully update and installed bootloader in result.
'bootloader + kernel + system' gave me successfully update and installed bootloader in result.

[amachronic]

'bootloader + kernel + system' gave me successfully update and installed bootloader in result.

What if you make the kernel and system parts zero length? Might it be satisfied with that?
(let's just hope there's not an off-by-one error which erases the first 128k of those partitions )

[vitt13]

What if you make the kernel and system parts zero length? Might it be satisfied with that?
(let's just hope there's not an off-by-one error which erases the first 128k of those partitions )

No, it looks like it has some verification that do not allow to flash corrupted UBIFS image. Even if I use raw image, or truncated image, it accepts either valid full-sized mtd3 partition image in 'normal' (raw) update mode or valid ubifs image in 'ubifs' update mode.
Here is the source of the 'recovery' application that looks like 'demo' functional https://github.com/JaminCheung/linux-recovery/tree/master/client/recovery
FiiO's 'recovery' application has no logging (as I remember) and has more verification.
---
Here is the resulted original firmware with 'dual boot' bootloader.
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/p2l3a22u3d7kk/M3K_fw_1.4.5_dualboot_rb

updated with multiboot feature
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/fcc89bmjdnubs/new_bootloader

[vitt13]

Is it possible to extract XVortex .rockbox folder from his images? He seems to made a bunch of changes to standard theme and bigger font is one of them.

Xhibition theme, credits to XVortex. https://www.mediafire.com/file/txji2isj04wmcm3/xhibition.zip/file
Pay attention: I included config.cfg for example. Make sure you don't replace your own.
Add the string to config manually, if you use customized config

Code: [Select]

font: /.rockbox/fonts/20-Terminus-Bold.fnt
wps: /.rockbox/wps/xhibition.wps
sbs: /.rockbox/wps/xhibition.sbs
backdrop: /.rockbox/backdrops/xhibition2.bmp

[bahus]

Xhibition theme, credits to XVortex.

Yeah thanks. I've been able to extract it myself from rockbox archive you posted earlier. But TBH I ended up with some different theme (I just didn't realize that we already have so many themes for this device)

[bahus]

amachronic
There was (it's broken now) useful feature for sansa players - ability to store .rockbox folder in some subfolder(like rbclipzip/.rockbox or rbm3k/.rockbox):
https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,51844.msg247984.html#msg247984

In short you can specify subfolder name in player specific file (rockbox_main.[PlayerName] like rockbox_main.clipzip)

I find it super useful because it allows you to prepare single "bootable" SD card for different players. Can you implement(or fix and enable) this feature also for m3k(and other x1000 ports)?

[amachronic]

I was looking into that "multiboot" stuff last night for other reasons, guess that explains why that feature didn't appear to do anything... Thanks for the tip. I'll see if I can get it working, it sounds very useful.

[mario69]

I would like to change the sd card and put a larger one, in the previous sd I downloaded rockbox and everything worked correctly, while, always following the same procedure with the new sd card, it keeps telling me error loading rockbox. If I put the old sd back everything works. there is a different procedure to follow? thanks

[Julian67]

I would like to change the sd card and put a larger one, in the previous sd I downloaded rockbox and everything worked correctly, while, always following the same procedure with the new sd card, it keeps telling me error loading rockbox. If I put the old sd back everything works. there is a different procedure to follow? thanks

It sounds to me that as you are using a larger microSDXC card it is probably formatted to exFAT instead of FAT32.  exFAT is the usual file system on cards over 32GB capacity but Rockbox doesn't support it.  You can format the card to FAT32 and start over.

[mario69]

thanks could you suggest to me a free,best if portable,application for make a fat32 format?
thanks